Pod Insights Modern Wisdom How To Manage Your Time For A Happier Life - Dr Cassie Holmes About this episode Dr Cassie Holmes is a Professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, an author and an award-winning researcher of time and happiness.
Time management in the modern world is hard. Many people don't feel like they have sufficient space to complete their to do list, let alone manifest their spare-time dreams. With some new strategies and a different mindset around time however, this problem might be fixed.
Expect to learn what time habits the happiest people all have, how to truly value things experiences you want to enjoy, the relationship between time and happiness, the best techniques for an efficient schedule, how science advises you to deepen friendships, how to make tasks you don't want to do suck less and much more...
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#timemanagement #productivity #happiness
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00:00 Intro
00:20 The Link Between Time & Happiness
03:49 Biggest Predictors of Life Satisfaction
09:36 Is Happiness Better Experienced or Remembered?
14:48 Strategies for Increased Happiness
21:44 Choose Importance Over Urgency
28:31 The Need for a Specific Goal
32:31 Bundling the Non-Negotiables
36:46 How to Deepen Friendships
43:34 Society’s Lack of Conversation
47:08 Time Poverty Vs Time Affluence
58:05 Relationship Between Time & Money
1:12:20 Where to Find Dr Holmes
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Transcript 11,558 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 If you are investing your time on the things that matter to you, then you will be happier, you will be more satisfied. And it's not more is better. It is just being intentional and spending the time in ways that matter to you.
0:18 Chris Williamson? You are basically a happiness teacher, right?
0:22 Speaker 00 Yes, I teach happiness and particularly focusing on the role of time for our happiness.
0:29 Chris Williamson? Why are those two things intrinsically linked?
0:33 Speaker 00 Well, because the way we spend the hours of our day sum up to the years of our life. And so the time that we spend is the fabric of our life. And from that, we are either more or less happy. And when I say happy, what I mean is the joy that we experience in our days, as well as the satisfaction we feel about our lives. So there's both that emotional feeling within, as well as evaluative and cognitive feeling about that both of those are linked to. And when I say the word happy and feeling happier,
1:16 Speaker 00 which is really the goal and you know, part of the title of my book, that's what I'm talking about.
1:23 Chris Williamson? Interesting. I remember reading a summary of Dan Gilbert and Daniel Kahneman's two approaches of what they thought about happiness. The lying in the pool with a cocktail on a lilo for the rest of your life. Yes, it's not meaningful, but you enjoyed every second individually. And then the other version that was like a meaningful one. And it seems like your definition of happiness here kind of combines the two. It's the state enjoyment in the moment, and it's the retrospective feeling of being satisfied about how your life has gone and about each moment as it was spent. Is that the commonly held definition? When we talk about happiness in the literature, in the science at the moment, is that what people mean when they refer to happiness?
2:05 Speaker 00 It is the sort of what the literature refers to, the term that they say is subjective wellbeing. And that is the coupling of this emotional component. So feeling more positive than negative emotion, as well as satisfaction about.
2:25 Speaker 00 And notably, there are instances in which they do sort of come apart. But as I'm not even just talking about the literature, but really about the implications for us as individuals and how we should be spending our time. What I am going for is that coupling. Like, we both want to feel happy and satisfied while it's happening, but also have it have an impact on our evaluation of how good life is and how meaningful. And meaningful is actually or meaning is is a little bit of a separate construct.
3:04 Speaker 00 But in our research, we've actually looked at what's the correlation between how happy people are feeling and how meaningful they feel like their life is. And they're so highly correlated. And yeah, there are instances where, again, you can pull them apart. But as I'm striving to feel sort of good in and about my life, and I think that that's what a lot of individuals are striving for. That's the operationalization of this idea, this construct using scientific jargon. But basically, that's our goal, to feel happy within and happy about. And really, it's about feeling joy and fulfillment. So that's the goal.
3:48 Chris Williamson? What are the biggest predictors of happiness and life satisfaction?
3:53 Speaker 00 Well, if you look at the all the studies that have happiness as a dependent variable, as the outcome, you see that a big thing that has an effect is our natural disposition. So our personality. And so like, are you a naturally half-glass-full type person? Or are you a natural grump? Now, that has a big effect, and it is important to recognize. But I don't focus as much on that because we don't have control over that. Another thing that does have an impact on our happiness is our circumstances and our life circumstances.
4:36 Speaker 00 So these are things like income level, attractiveness, marital status. And interestingly, these things are the ones that a lot of people are like, if only I have that, then I'll be happy. And that's what they're striving for. If only I had a lot of money, then I would be happy. If only I met the love of my life and got married, then I'd be happy. If only I were super gorgeous and I would be happy. And the research shows, looking at the correlation, the relationship between those circumstances and happiness, that there is a relationship, but it's significantly smaller than we think. And the answer is no. If only you had a lot of money, would you be happy and happy forever? The answer is no for that.
5:20 Speaker 00 If only you were super gorgeous, would you be happy and happy forever? The answer is no for that. If you found the love of your life and got married, would you be happy forever? The answer is no for that. And so also our life circumstances are largely out of our day to day control. So again, that's not something I focus on. What I focus on is this final chunk, this input into happiness that does, and science shows, has a significant effect and actually a significantly larger effect than we think. And that is what we do and our mindset in the day to day. And I particularly am focused through this lens of time,
6:03 Speaker 00 how we spend our time and how we think about our time has a significant influence on our happiness. And this is where we have choice. And this is why I'm interested in it. Because if we understand the science and know, are informed, okay, what has been validated as having a significant effect on how we feel in our days and how satisfied we feel about our lives? Well, great, then we can make the choice, the day to day choices, to implement those insights and then feel happier in our days and more satisfied about our lives.
6:42 Chris Williamson? What are the ways in which the happiest people spend their time then?
6:47 Speaker 00 Well, the research points to some averages. So, looking at time tracking research, what those folks, the researchers do is look over the course of people's days, what activities are they doing? As well as how they're feeling over the course of the day, so that you can identify, okay, what are those activities that on average are associated with the most positive emotion? What are those activities that on average are associated with the most negative emotion? That research points to the happiest activities are those that involve social connection. So whether through intimacy, or spending time with family and friends.
7:29 Speaker 00 The activities that are associated with the least amount of happiness, on average, tend to be commuting, work, and housework. So, that's a bummer, and we can talk about how to address that. But I think what's even more helpful for folks and listeners, is not thinking about averages, but actually, and which I described this process and this exercise that is so helpful, in Happier Hour, is basically tracking your own time. So, over the course of a week, writing down, what are you doing? What activities are you doing? Or what activity are you doing? And every half hour, and there's a worksheet on my website, in case helpful.
8:14 Speaker 00 But really, it's writing down what you're doing, and being more specific, not just work, or socializing, but what work activity are you doing? And if you're socializing, who are you with, and what are you doing? And as importantly, is as you're coming out of that activity, how did that activity make you feel? Not this sort of global, is like, "I like to do this, and I don't like to do this", but... Having spent your time doing that, how do you feel on a 10-point scale? And this is so helpful because at the end of the week, you have this fantastic personalized dataset. So you can look, alright, what are those activities that got my highest ratings?
8:56 Speaker 00 Why were those that really made me feel happy and satisfied and joyful? What are those activities that are like, not at all happy? You also can see just how much time you're spending across your various activities. So you can sort of pick up on like, holy cow, I spent a whole lot of time on this activity that got like fours in my ratings and it's not even all that necessary. So that's informative in itself. Maybe reallocate that, what I would say is wasted time, into time that is more joyful and which you now know what types of activities those are because you have the data right there in front of you.
9:35 Chris Williamson? Is there anything interesting about happiness differences between experienced and remembered activities or events?
9:44 Speaker 00 There is. And, but again, I'm going for the ones that have the double, that provide on both. And what's nice about the time tracking that you do for yourself is that as you're coming out of the experience, it's capturing both how you felt in it because it's really a sort of a close memory, but also how you're feeling about. But yes, research does pick up on TV watching. But interestingly, so like, TV watching is shown to be quite mediocre on sort of meaning, but on the average American, the average
10:26 Speaker 00 viewing of TV actually gets pretty high ratings. So there you see a disconnect. But what's cool about the individual data that you collect, and I teach a course on this, so Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design. So over years, I've had my MBA students and executive MBA students do this. And so I see these patterns from their observations.
10:50 Speaker 00 What's sort of interesting is TV rarely shows up among people's happiest activities in their, this sort of broad 10-point rating. But what's also interesting, you see, and you can see, like, actually, that first hour of TV is sort of fun, right? It's like after that long day of work and you pour yourself a glass of wine and you're settling into that first episode, it's totally delightful. But what happens often, and what we see in, you know, our own time tracking data, is that when we say yes to, do you want to view the next episode?
11:31 Speaker 00 And those evenings of binge-watching, by hour two and three, actually, your happiness ratings, even your enjoyment ratings have plummeted. And so that also is really insightful, being like, okay. And I can explain the psychology behind the fact that we get used to things over time. So hedonic adaptation is our psychological propensity to get used to stuff. After doing the same thing over a continued period of time, doing the same thing repeatedly over time, spending time with the same person over time, we get used to those. So it has less of an emotional impact than it did initially.
12:15 Speaker 00 Now, it's good that we adapt in the face of bad stuff because it makes us resilient. It's less painful over time, we become more tolerant. But the bummer is that we also get used to good stuff. So, I mean, that explains why something that is like, quote-unquote, enjoyable, like watching TV, initially, yes, it is fun, but over time, it stops having as strong of an impact. And so that has some implications for how we structure our time in terms of, you should actually spread out the good activities so that that sort of initial starting, that
12:55 Speaker 00 intensity, has as strong of an effect as possible. But it's not only over the course of hours within the day. It's also really important to recognize this in the days of our lives because, you know, we were talking about, you know, a sort of...
13:16 Speaker 00 The activity of watching TV, but think of something way more profoundly, potentially joyful than that is like spending time with the people you love. And you think about the very first time that your partner said, I love you, right? The impact of that is like fireworks in your like heart and mind, like it's so impactful. But then those words, I love you over years got shortened to love you. And you sort of say it as you're hanging up the phone or walking out the door. You don't even hear the words, like the meaning behind those words. And if something as profound as like a declaration of love is something that we get used to such
14:00 Speaker 00 that it stops having the same emotional impact, that is something to take into account and to try to offset in the happiness that we feel in our days, right? Again, that's what we want is like to feel joy within our days and satisfied about our lives. And so some of the exercises and advice that I give based off of the studies is basically, how do we not only figure out what activities to spend more time on and to maximize our time on, but also how do we engage in those happiest activities so that we actually experience
14:42 Speaker 00 the happiness that is potentially there within that time that we're already spending and not miss out on it?
14:48 Chris Williamson? What are some of the strategies there other than, I guess, chunking stuff down into smaller, more frequent exposures so that the hedonic slope doesn't drop off quite so quickly? What else can people do?
15:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, so breaking it up, which is what you just said. So having breaks between the happy activities, infusing variety is another. So research shows, for instance, that couples who engage in novel experiences together report greater relationship satisfaction and last longer in their relationships. And it's because those novel experiences infuse variety. And so by doing various, like different things together, it keeps you engaged, it keeps you paying attention and you're sort of doing that with your partner. Another is recognizing that even though these things might seem every day,
15:46 Speaker 00 recognizing that they are not inevitably going to continue happening every day. Our time is finite. And when you actually recognize just how limited times left are, that absolutely draws our attention. And so one of the exercises, which is actually quite poignant is if you, you know, reflect back on your last couple of weeks and what was an activity that really brought you joy? Oftentimes it's these very mundane moments or like ordinary moments. And count, count how many times you have left. And actually, the first step is counting how many times have you done this activity in your life so far?
16:30 Speaker 00 Then count how many times do you have in your life left to do this activity? Accounting for the fact that factors in your life are likely to change. Accounting for the fact that if that joyful activity involves another person, circumstances of their life and their availability is gonna likely change. And then recognizing or counting, calculating really, the percentage of all your times of doing that activity you have left. And so often we recognize that, holy cow, I have less than half. And in some cases, it's like eight percent. Like one of the examples, I had my students do this exercise.
17:15 Speaker 00 One of the students, he calculated time spent watching sports with his best friend on the couch. And he calculated, so how many times has he done that in his life? I mean, that was a sort of funny exercise and he was like embarrassed and proud to, you know, including all those days after school and middle school and the high school. But then they went off to college and then it was like Christmas breaks for two weeks on it. You know, they would be on the couch watching TV and sports together. But then they continued living in different cities and had a girlfriend. And so then it was like visits included partners. And then the, his best friend had as a two-year-old.
17:56 Speaker 00 So even when they visit each other, being able to spend some hours on the couch with just this buddy watching sports. Like they are very limited and doing that calculation, he realized that in his life, he has only eight percent of times on his couch, watching, whether it's his couch or his friend's couch, basically watching sports with his buddy, left. And that is really impactful. So what does that make you do? Well, it makes you prioritize that time. So actually during the break of that class, he went in and called his buddies, like dude, we need to plan a guys weekend. But also during
18:37 Speaker 00 that time, it makes you savor and soak up that time more. And I share in the book, my calculation with my coffee dates with my daughter. And this, these coffee dates are so like, it actually was born out of a very functional thing of me needing caffeine and stopping at a coffee shop on my way to drop her off and into my office. And she's tagging along as the little preschooler. But what we did, and this is another strategy to keep paying attention, is turning a routine into a ritual. And so this ritual that my daughter and my coffee date, we gave it a name, Thursday
19:22 Speaker 00 morning coffee dates. And now even though we've shifted, had to shift it to Saturday mornings, we still call it our Thursday morning coffee date. And we like, listen to the same songs, we order the same things. And it is just this special time, 30 minutes each week for the two of us to be together. And I calculated, how many times have we had a coffee date together in the past? And including during my maternity leave, where I'd like sort of bundle her up and take her to the coffee shop, because that was my like, source of sanity. And then our weekly coffee dates, I calculated that we've had about 400 coffee dates together in our life so far. And then I
20:03 Speaker 00 calculated, how many do we likely have left? So she's seven. In about, what, five years, she's going to be 12 and want to go to the coffee shop with her friends instead of me. Sad. So that's going to limit it. And then she's going to go off to college and probably live, you know, across the country. And so I calculated,
20:25 Speaker 00 We probably have about 230 coffee dates together left. That is 35% of our coffee dates left. That's less than half, quite a bit less than half, and she's only seven. So what is that? What's the impact on that? Initially, like, yes, tear in my eye. But the bigger effect is that I prioritize this time. I make this time. So when it was on Thursday mornings, meetings were scheduled around it. They didn't start before nine. Now that it shifted to Saturday mornings, activities are scheduled around it.
21:07 Speaker 00 But not only is it about prioritizing that time, it is when I'm spending that time, knowing just how limited and precious those moments are, then I remove distractions. So like my cellphone goes away. That like constant to do list that's running through my mind of always like, okay, what do I need to do next? Like what's coming up in that planning gets quieted because this is the time of my life. This is, these are the important moments. And recognizing that they're limited makes us pay more attention.
21:43 Chris Williamson? I got a Memento Mori calendar that counts down to 80. Have you seen these? And it's in weeks of your life?
21:52 Speaker 00 Oh, I haven't, but.
21:53 Chris Williamson? So you can imagine that you actually buy it prefilled in. So you tell them your age and they pre-fill in the first, whatever, like 50 multiplied by your, or 52 multiplied by your age in terms of squares. And that, I guess, is kind of similar because you're looking at what is it that I've got left? Thing that comes to mind when you're talking about that is the relationship between a child and the parent, that you spend 18 years or whatever, living out of each other's pockets. And for the last portion of that, those teenage years, just hating each other and constantly having arguments and storming up the stairs and feeling like you're in a prison. And then you leave. And in retrospect, I mean, it must be, in terms of hours spent with your parents.
22:37 Chris Williamson? Almost all people in the Western world must be looking at the final 10%. Like at the age of 18.
22:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:45 Chris Williamson? At the age of 18, you've spent 90% of the time that you're ever going to spend with your parents. Again, maybe even less, I guess. I recently took my mum to Rome. She hadn't been away on holiday for ages and I wanted to do something nice. And me and her went away to Rome and we spent four days, four and a tiny bit of days together. And I put her in a sidecar. Did a, I made her do a vesper tour around Rome in a motorbike and sidecar. And put, and it looks like Wallace and Gromit. It's the funniest thing. And that, that was me. One of the things I was very conscious of there was, wow, I haven't spent this much time around my mother in 15, seven, 16 years.
23:27 Chris Williamson? 16 years since I've spent four days in her, four days. Like, it's not that long. And yeah, I, I like the idea of starting with the end in mind of using the precariousness of what it is that we've got. And also the other thing I suppose is that even without working out how many, accurately working out how many of these things you've got left. Life situations can change pretty rapidly and the housemate that you live with now might not live with you again in six months' time. I love watching a series on TV with one of my housemates that's back in the UK. But I live in Austin now. I didn't know that I was going to live in Austin. I was going to try it out and see if I enjoyed it.
24:10 Chris Williamson? And now I'm here and you know, there will be, I mean, Sam Harris talks about this as well. There will be a last time that you bounce your baby daughter on your knee. You know, there will be, she will get too big or not want to do it anymore, or some situation will occur. This could be the last time. This could be the final time. That you get to be abroad with your mother, that you get to be on the couch with your friends, shit talking the world's greatest athletes as they perform as well as they can. And yes, I think adding a sense of seriousness.
24:46 Speaker 00 Absolutely.
24:47 Chris Williamson? This, this has important consequences. This isn't something that should be taken lightly. If it's, if you're deriving this much pleasure from something, you should take it seriously because you take shit seriously, that means nothing. You take shit seriously all the time, that is completely arbitrary. The argument with a stranger on the internet that you're never going to think about again. You took that more seriously than the activity today that gave you the most joy. And yes, I like the idea of all of that, creating perspective, scarcity, understanding the scarcity, understanding the lack that you have, reflecting on what's, how important it is to you and using that as a projection to remind yourself of the scarcity moving forward. I think all of that's great.
25:30 Speaker 00 Yeah. And what you're picking up on is so, it's that sort of difference between what's important versus what seems urgent. And we tend to dedicate our time and our thoughts to what is urgent, irrespective of its importance. And yeah, by thinking about recognizing the preciousness, the limited nature, the finite nature of the time we have with these people we love, doing these things that we love, that increases the urgency and makes it to recognize how urgent it is.
26:10 Speaker 00 And interestingly, in our research, we find actually that people who think about their time from a broader perspective, so are thinking in terms of their years and their life overall, instead of just thinking hour by hour, they actually are happier and report greater meaning in their life. And one of the drivers is because they spend their hours on what's important.
26:39 Speaker 00 Irrespective of its urgency. And so it gives you, you use the term perspective. Absolutely, it does that. So taking that perspective of your life and from taking that broader life perspective, it pulls out what is important to you. So in Happier Hour, I have a few exercises that do encourage not just counting times left, but to take this broader life perspective. And some of them are quite poignant, but they're so important because they're so clarifying. So one of them, for instance, is writing your eulogy. This is, and some of my students, I will say, are like, what? I thought this was a happiness
27:19 Speaker 00 class and you're having me write my own eulogy? And so what this exercise is, is basically projecting forward, assuming you live a long life and writing down, how do you want to be remembered? So what are the words you want people to use to describe you? What life do you want to have lived? And I point out to, one of my students was like, I am sorry, professor, but I can't do this assignment. Like thinking about my death creates too much anxiety. I'm gonna like forfeit my grid. I'm like, okay, let me reframe the exercise or the assignment for you. Write about the life that you want to live because that's essentially what it is. It's not an exercise about death. It's about what life do you
28:02 Speaker 00 want to live? And writing that down and articulating, clarify, what's important? What are your values? Who do you want to be? And with that clarification, what is your purpose? Like, what are your ultimate goals? With that, that even though it's thinking about years and life overall, that informs how we spend our upcoming hours, right?
28:30 Chris Williamson? Surely it's only
28:33 Chris Williamson? In contrast of how we want to spend our time, that we can look at the way we spend our time. Like it's like a subtraction. Okay. It's what is it that I want to achieve? What is it that I'm doing that's getting me toward achieving that? And that's not the lean in, go get a type A thing. It's I want to achieve a life which involves lots of outdoor activities and whatever, right?
28:54 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:55 Chris Williamson? But you can only contrast those two if you have an end goal, if you have some sort of destination. I had Ryan Holiday on last week and he was talking about how discipline without a destination is basically impossible because what are you being disciplined in service of? Like, what is your discipline working towards? Perhaps your your life goal in some alternate universe that was hell would be to spend as much time on TikTok as possible. Well, discipline would involve you spending as much time on TikTok as possible, right? I want to be the most, watch the most number of hours of TikTok of anybody on the planet. That's my life goal. It is only in comparison with the things that you want to do that you can look at discipline. And it kind of feels like the way that you spend your time is pretty much exactly the same.
29:38 Speaker 00 Yeah. And the thing that I actually see among my MBA students that I think that folks can all relate to is the importance. So without your own clear sense of purpose of your own goal and what you're striving for, then we pick up on other people's goals, like these general notions of success. And those general notions of success, it's a terrible thing to be striving for because A, it's so amorphous, it's so multi-dimensional, and a lot of it is extrinsically driven and not intrinsically. So it's not what you ultimately
30:21 Speaker 00 care about. It's sort of like this general sense of like what you should do and what one does do. And that is very difficult because
30:35 Speaker 00 It's it's not difficult. What it does do is at least do unhappiness. Because it's like, A, the the thing is like, the goal, the post is always changing. Right? It's like this general like if success is having a lot of money. But then, as you make more money, your reference point of how you're doing shifts. Because you're surrounded by people who also have more money or fame. You know, it's like you're surrounded by people who you're all of a sudden in like a different room. And you're like, how am I doing compared to those around me? Well, there's always someone doing better, right? But the value in for you identifying what matters to you and your own purpose
31:19 Speaker 00 and your own ultimate goals is that that is where what you're talking about with this idea of like, that's the comparison that should motivate you. It's like if you're not aligned or like living out what you care about, then that should, you know, kick you in the butt and make you start working in line with that. But also, it's it's great because when you are achieving along that route, it is so much more rewarding.
31:52 Speaker 00 Because it's it's what you care about, like, and you said, and like each step along the way. And actually going back to even thinking about activities and how we should be spending our time. In your time tracking, you know, there might be activities that aren't fun. So there is those that are maybe wasted time, like the TikTok example is like, you're spending a lot of time on it. It's not necessary, nor is it very fun. But then there's also some of these activities that you're that are actually necessary.
32:27 Chris Williamson? Well, that was that was something I noticed about your your example commuting to work, being at work and housework.
32:34 Speaker 00 Yeah.
32:35 Chris Williamson? For most people, those are relatively nonnegotiable. That the things that they can't outsource, they can't get someone else to go to work for them. They can't get someone to drive them to work. They can't get someone else to do the housework. So yeah, there has to be a solution in order to make these things. Yeah.
32:52 Speaker 00 So there are. So there are some strategies for the commuting, for instance, is something that you have to do. And bundling is actually one of the strategies that coming out of research by Katie Milkman and her colleagues. It's such a simple idea, but it's very effective. And what it is, is like, you take this activity that you don't want to do, but is necessary, like driving to work, or commuting, however, whatever it means, or like folding the laundry, you know, we have household chores, and bundling it with an activity that you do enjoy that is more worthwhile. So whether it's picking up the phone, we talked about the role of social connection, picking up the phone and calling your friend while you're folding the laundry or commuting, or listening to
33:37 Speaker 00 a wonderful, enriching, enlightening podcast.
33:39 Chris Williamson? Right here, subscribe below. Thank you, Cassie. Start to share, share, share the channel. That's what you're here for. Thank you.
33:45 Speaker 00 Exactly. But I mean, like, joking aside, absolutely. So all of a sudden, instead of, like, oftentimes, during a commute, when someone's driving, flipping through the radio mindlessly, or if they're on the tube or subway, flicking through their TikTok, and instead of, if, instead of that sort of filling of time, if you spent that time intentionally, listening to a podcast where you learned something, that you're inspired by, then all of a sudden, that time that you're just sort of trying to get through of the commute, all of a sudden becomes, feels more worthwhile and enriched.
34:24 Chris Williamson? Let me give you my most recent bundling solution. So
34:28 Speaker 00 Great.
34:28 Chris Williamson? I have quite a lot of emails that I need to deal with, and I can't really outsource them, or maybe I just struggle at delegating control. My personal assistant might, might agree with that. I bought an exercise desk, which is a recumbent stationary bike that has a flat, it's built, it's purpose-built, right? And you put the laptop on top of it. There's something called zone two cardio, which is cardio between around about 110 to 130 bpm, heart rate for most people. And it's actually kind of hard to achieve, because it's not as quick as a run, a run would Take you way over it, probably into the 140s, but it's quicker than a walk. So it's kind of difficult to work out how you're going to mediate this particular pace. And it's also, you have to do it for quite a while. You need to accumulate around about 180 minutes
35:12 Chris Williamson? per week if you want to get a very good impact, but it's the train slow to run fast, blah, blah, blah, tons of health benefits, longevity and heart rate variability and resting heart rate and blah, blah, blah. But it's really hard to do. Emails also suck. So now when I do my emails, I just sit on the bike. I set it away for an hour. I have, I've got Parkinson's law going on. So I've restricted down my time to have a goal. And I'm like, right, I'm good.
35:37 Speaker 00 Yeah.
35:37 Chris Williamson? Got to get my thing done. So I got 60 minutes and I know and I can see it counting down or whatever. I'm going to get the cardio in that I would have kind of, it's satisfying. It does make me feel good, but it's not, it would be really awful to do on its own. And yet I take so much pleasure from doing it while I do my, my emails. It's insane. And then I get my emails finished. I actually, I genuinely look forward to doing emails. Cause I'm like, I'm gonna get a bit of cardio and get a nice sweat on. I'm going to feel really good once I finish up. So that's, that's like the most hyper nerdy solution to this, but also listening to podcasts on your commute is another one.
36:14 Speaker 00 I, I am very appreciative of this suggestion though, because email is my source of least happiness. And so if I'm, if there's a way to bundle it.
36:26 Chris Williamson? 360 bucks will get you an Exo, Exo Work, Exo Desk 2000i and it will change your life.
36:33 Speaker 00 Oh my gosh.
36:34 Chris Williamson? And then you can hang clothes on it when you're not using it as well. It's fantastic.
36:39 Speaker 00 Talk about a persuasive advertisement.
36:42 Chris Williamson? I have not even sponsored, not even sponsored by them. And right. So you've, you've brought up a couple of times here, the importance of social connection. You mentioned intimacy, which is presumably like relationship partner stuff as well. How can people develop their friendships and deepen their friendships? Because one of the things I hear a lot is a difficulty in people finding friends, especially guys, I think, when they get into adulthood, you know, you don't have the same structures that maybe through school, through uni, sports teams, stuff like that. I think guys, especially when they get married, there's a ton of evidence that suggests they just adopt the friends of their partner and that's now their friend group. But
37:24 Chris Williamson? even that starts to dwindle over time as well. So what about deepening friendships? What are some of the strategies people can use to do that?
37:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, and so there's a exercise in my, that I share in the book and that I have my students do, which is called the Relationship Closeness Induction Task. But basically what it is, it is a series of questions. And this, this takes 15 minutes. And I will loop back to how this can be implemented to sort of forge friendships.
37:59 Speaker 00 It's a 15-minute task. So basically, it starts with, I think it's like three minutes that, and in these questions, you, like, you're paired up, I pair my students up. And they have two minutes to ask a question. They ask a question, the person answers it, and then the other person asks the same question and they answer it. So it's reciprocal.
38:26 Speaker 00 And then the first two minutes is like these, what you talk about when you meet someone, like, what's your name? What made you decide to come, in this case, it's like, to UCLA to get your MBA? You know, where are you from? These things that, you know, are those initial get-to-know-you conversations. But then I'm like, okay, guys, now move on to the second set of questions. And the second set of questions are a little bit more self-discursive. So they are like, what do you like to spend your time on? Like, your hobbies and your experiences. So you get to hear about the other person's experiences and how they spend their time. And then the last set of questions, they have eight minutes to go through.
39:11 Speaker 00 And these are deeper. These are like, what are you most proud about in your life? What is your happiest childhood memory? What is your greatest fear? And these questions aren't just about how you spend your time. It's really your emotional experience in your life. And this is a method that's been shown to make people feel significantly closer and like they are more like friends at the end of it, even though it's 15 minutes. But what it's doing is based off of reciprocal escalating self-disclosure. So what that means is that it is sharing.
39:58 Speaker 00 And asking and listening. So it has to be not just you like dumping like, oh my God, this is my biggest fear. And this is what I'm really struggling with. But also asking the other person and listening. What is, what are you struggling with? And through that, what friendship is, it's about this sense of being known and being cared about and knowing and caring. So there is that reciprocal feature of it. And so in, you know, like you were talking about, often in shared experiences, when we're in experiences together, that's an opportunity to develop that sort of shared experience.
40:42 Speaker 00 Like when you go to college or university, that shared experience, starting a new job together. Often, you know, with all of us or so many of us working remotely, actually the opportunity to develop actual friendship at work has really waned. And that's why I am attributing the increased disengagement from work that we've observed in the workforce to the fact that folks don't have friends and not an opportunity. So to say that, yes, it is about finding activities that you, you know, like people who like doing the same thing. But it just showing up and doing the activity together
41:26 Speaker 00 isn't going to be where the real friendship comes from. It's from having that conversation. That conversation that gets authentic and you are being vulnerable and you are supporting the other person and their vulnerability. So to the point, be ready to ask the good questions when you're hanging out with someone and also be willing to share. Note that not
41:57 Speaker 00 Sometimes you need that escalating sort of component of the conversation so that you don't like freak people out. But it's it's always surprising by how happy people are to really get genuine. And so it's just up to you to be willing to get there, too.
42:18 Chris Williamson? Didn't your husband ask you some insanely intense questions the first time that you met?
42:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I share that in the book. My husband and I, he is, I mean, he's such a wonderful person. And he he's like my favorite conversation partner still to this day. And we were set up on a blind date over coffee. And he like, his first question was like, a very last one in this relationship closeness induction task. He was like, what to you is the secret or not the secret, like, what are you striving for for like, a happy, good life? And I'm like, oh, wait, what about like, what are my hobbies? And what made me decide to come to Stanford?
43:06 Speaker 00 He skipped all of that. And it was so refreshing. And so coming out of even that first coffee date, I was like, wow, I feel like I know someone and am a little bit known by this stranger. And so I think that that that is an example that is has proven well for me in terms of establishing a really beautiful relationship.
43:34 Chris Williamson? I think a lot of people have problems at the moment with the shallow sort of nature of conversations that they have. I think it's another reason why podcasts have got so much popularity, because you get to kind of almost hear sometimes conversations that you wish that you could have a little bit more. I mean, I know for me, there's the reason that I enjoyed starting this show four and a half years ago, 500 something episodes ago, is because I was struggling to have the frequency and depth of conversation that I wanted. And if I was able to do it on the podcast, you have an excuse to kind of bypass all of this. So tell me about you and what did you have for breakfast? And what are you up to tomorrow? Like, people don't expect that. They expect you to kind of pretty quickly get into the meat of the
44:18 Chris Williamson? performance with this. And I think that
44:23 Chris Williamson? You're right that the escalation, you're going to turn some people off. But if you're the sort of person for whom you want to kind of speed through minutes one through 10 and get into the final five, I think that that makes a lot of sense. And I think that more people than realize it would resonate with like a really interesting, deep conversation. When I think about what most of my twenties is a very normal bloke in the UK, just being a club promoter around a range of young people that were relatively outgoing and whatever, whatever. So few people had conversations like the ones that they wanted to, I think. They had conversations that were very surface level, that were about TV or current events,
45:08 Chris Williamson? but not important current events, just like, and I think that that might just be a byproduct of being young, right? It might just be a byproduct of being in your twenties. I don't know.
45:16 Speaker 00 I don't think so. I think that those are the types of conversations that generally are had in social settings, like social settings with big groups. So actually touching back to the time tracking exercise that I suggest folks do, the reason that I say it's so important to not just sort of write socializing as your activity, but actually, who are you with? And also going back and looking at, okay, well, what were those activities that I felt like most connecting? And that might be like, for some, for me, it absolutely requires a genuine conversation.
45:59 Speaker 00 And but that genuine conversation can happen in a lot of different contexts. It can happen with a colleague at work. It can happen with like someone at a cocktail party, as I am only satisfied when I leave one of these sort of cocktail parties. If I come out, I'm like, oh, my God, I got that person was so cool and so interesting. But so it's like finding those ways, those activities, but also the pieces of that activity that that sort of make you feel most connected. So that it's the onus is on you not only to put yourself, spend time on those activities that make you feel that way, but really.
46:43 Speaker 00 Make that time what you want it to be by showing up, having, driving the conversation. And I agree with you, people are more willing than they might initially think. It's just because it doesn't often happen, doesn't mean that it won't be fun. And that, you know, and just give it, give it a shot.
47:07 Chris Williamson? Talk to me about the time poverty and time affluence relationship.
47:13 Speaker 00 Yeah, so time poverty is what actually drove me to write the book. And what it is, is this acute feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it. And when we feel like we don't have enough time, it's this really limiting experience. And it is experienced as stress and it makes us unhappy. And it also makes us less healthy. So research shows that when people feel like they're, they don't have enough time, they're less likely to exercise, they're less likely, they're delayed going to the doctor. It also makes us less nice.
47:58 Speaker 00 We are less likely to slow down and help others out. And it makes us less confident in being able to achieve all we set out to do because of the sense of limitation and it makes us less happy. And I, I share as a, to open the book, this time earlier in my career, when I was living in Philly and I was an assistant professor at Wharton and had given, it was just one of these crazy days where I traveled up to New York to give a talk. And this, my presentation was sandwiched in between back to back meetings. And then I had this colleague dinner and then I was rushing to get the very last train
48:40 Speaker 00 that would get me home to my four month old at the time and my husband asleep in Philly. And I did make the train, but I remember like looking out the window as like the night was passing by and the houses were like in this blur. And I was like, I don't know if I can keep up. There's just, I am exhausted and overwhelmed between the pressures of work, being a good partner, being a good parent. Being a good friend, like the never-ending pile of chores, there simply weren't enough hours in a day to get it all done, let alone to do any of it well, let alone to enjoy any of it along the way.
49:21 Speaker 00 And that feeling made me at that moment think, okay, the solution is to quit. I should quit my job that I've worked so hard to get. Because surely if I moved to a sunny, you know, slow-paced island somewhere, I'd be happy. If I had a whole lot more time, I was like, then I will be happier. But before I quit, I was like, this is actually an empirical question. Like, are people who have a whole lot more time happier? And this is a question that we've gone on to test. And looking at with some of my beloved collaborators, Hal Hirschfield and Marissa Shreef, we looked at what's the relationship between the amount of discretionary time people have and their life satisfaction.
50:06 Speaker 00 And analyzing across studies, in one of the studies, we analyzed data from tens of thousands of working as well as non-working Americans, calculating how much discretionary time they had in their days, time spent on discretionary activities. And what we found was really interesting, it was this upside-down U-shape. So, sort of reaching down to unhappiness on both sides. On the one hand, on the left side, with too little time, people are less happy. That is the time poor. That is me on the train. But what was interesting was on the other side, that you also saw this downward slope to unhappiness. And so it suggested that there's actually such thing as having too much discretionary
50:51 Speaker 00 time. And in digging into that, what it turns out is, like, people are driven to be productive. That is, we are averse to being idle. When we spend days upon days with all of our hours and nothing to show for how we spend those hours, it undermines our sense of purpose. And with that, we feel dissatisfied. And so this is really important to recognize that and actually in the middle of that upside down U, it's pretty flat. So it's not about how much time you have. It's really with the conclusion from this and is what drove the book. It's not actually about how much time you have available to spend how you want.
51:34 Speaker 00 It is how you spend the time that you have available. So it's not about being time rich. It's about making the time that you spend rich. It's about, as we've said, identifying what are those activities that are really worthwhile? And when you're spending your time on those activities, being fully engaged, not being distracted, so that you get the happiness that is available in that activity. And so, but when I'm saying time rich, it's about looking back on your day and feeling fulfilled,
52:18 Speaker 00 not about not being busy, because you can actually be quite busy. But if you've spent time on things that felt worthwhile, then you don't feel depleted, you feel fulfilled and satisfied. And that's the goal. And so that's actually what motivated or sort of directed my research agenda since of like, okay, how should we be investing the hours of our days? So that again, at the end of the day, instead of feeling depleted and stressed and overwhelmed and unhappy, you look back and you feel satisfied and fulfilled and like excited for the next day to do, to do more, right? And so the
53:00 Speaker 00 with so many people feeling time poor, so we conducted a national poll in the US, finding that nearly half of Americans feel like they don't have enough time to do what they set out and want to do. And that's bad because of all those reasons that I said. But actually, we have more time available to us.
53:26 Speaker 00 Then we think and when we spend that time in ways that feel really worthwhile, that gives us energy, that lessens the sense of constraint and limitation. And actually, that increased sense of efficacy of being able to accomplish what you set out to do increases your sense of how much time you feel like you have available. And when I'm talking about time available, this is hours within your days, not what we were talking about at the very beginning of like the limited nature of your life.
53:59 Chris Williamson? Hmm. You talk about this discretionary time. Am I right in thinking that the bottom end where things stop being bad was about one hour? And the top end, when things start to get bad again is five hours? Is that the bracket?
54:14 Speaker 00 Um, it's two hours and five hours. So with less than approximately two hours of discretionary time, at least in the data set, the American time you survey data, then we saw that sort of drop off in happiness. And more than approximately five hours is where we saw that drop off in happiness. Now, interestingly, for some, and I will admit for me at the time, I was like, two hours sounds like a luxury. There's no way, two hours is like in the day to, you know, spend on discretionary activities. But then when I actually calculated the hours of my days that I spend doing what I love, like cuddling with my little, you know, my little baby,
54:59 Speaker 00 having dinner with my husband, that wonderful conversationalist that I've already referenced. Um, having a, giving a call to my best friend on my walk home. You know, we talked about, yes, commuting is bad. But when I'm talking to one of my favorite people, that those, those minutes added up to about like an hour and a half. Of time that I wouldn't have wanted to spend in any other way. And that's helpful because it suggests that in fact, two hours isn't totally out of reach. Um, but it does require being intentional about the time it does require.
55:40 Speaker 00 Um, particularly if you do work full time and have other demands, it does require. Um, sifting out that wasted time, that sand, the sort of TikTok time. Or what you can identify for yourself, what that wasted time is for you. It does require minimizing the waste. So that you do and prioritize and make the time for the stuff that really matters to you.
56:08 Chris Williamson? I think a lot of people when first faced with this will probably have a little bit of. Of difficulty because they'll confuse a comfortable or convenient activity for an enjoyable one. So finish up at the end of the workday and get home. And while the way that I relax is by watching Netflix for a couple of hours on an evening with a glass of wine. You go, I, I understand, but what else? Is there something else that you could be doing, which would be more enjoyable? And because it's less comfortable or convenient, it's presumed as being like more work. Oh, well, I've just finished work. I don't have to go and do more work. It's like, okay, look objectively, would you prefer to spend your evening going out and seeing your friends?
56:52 Chris Williamson? Or going and playing a new sport or whatever it is that you, whatever the thing is that you want to do. As opposed to this thing, which is just the path of least resistance. What would you tomorrow have wanted you today to have done? Like, would you, are you going to look back tomorrow on the way that you spent your evening watching yet another shit Netflix series? With yet another very average glass of wine? Or would you get much more enjoyment, both in the moment and in retrospect? Had you gone to go and see your friends? That was the biggest thing. It was Laura Vanderkam, four and a bit years ago. Who taught me about the experiencing, anticipating and remembering self and just having that model in my mind has changed. Like I go and do so much stupid, stupid
57:35 Chris Williamson? novel stuff because I think, well, if I do this, even if it's completely terrible, I've got an awesome memory that's going to stay in my mind and that's going to expand the units that I'm gonna have that'll make my life feel like it goes longer and all the rest of this stuff. So yeah, I think getting past the mistaking a comfortable or convenient activity for an enjoyable one. I think that's a really important thing, especially for people that are super, super busy, spent a long day at work, got the kids up earlier in the morning, so on and so forth. So going on from that, how do you think people should think about the relationship between time and money? Because that's for most people is a hugely correlated situation.
58:19 Speaker 00 Yeah. And even before we get to the time and money sort of interaction, I think that the time tracking exercise is the reason it's so powerful is to combat exactly what you're talking about. This general notion that people have of like, oh, I enjoy watching TV because that's sort of what I do. But if you actually have the data in front of you and it's like, well, not really, like it is the path of least resistance. I mean, that happens to be what you are mindlessly doing. It sort of fills your week. Yeah.
59:01 Speaker 00 But it doesn't mean that it's actually what you enjoy doing. And if you're picking up on like, you know, like, and this, and what comes out, it's like, people are like, oh, I don't have time to meet up with my friend, my sister for dinner. But in fact,
59:18 Speaker 00 You do. Like, instead of going back home and getting on the couch in that sort of default is it's it's not work. Like, text your sister and be like, "Let's meet up." And then when you do and you're out, you're like, that gets a 10 instead of the, you know, four of like that third hour of Netflix, right? And so with that objective numerical data that is your very own, right there in front of you, then that is what helps motivate and kickstart into spending time in these ways that are really impactful. And to your point and Laura's point, and actually, like, going back to my example with my coffee
1:00:02 Speaker 00 date with my daughter, the effect on happiness carries over beyond just the time that you're spending, right? So there's that anticipation of it. So like, I look forward to my coffee date with my daughter. She looks forward to it. And then when we're in it, we're spending it. So it's like 30 minutes of delectable, like, sweetness. But then we remember it and we talk about it. And if you ask me how happy I am, I am like genuinely so happy because, again, what is happiness? It's thinking about our time and our lives. And when you ask me how happy I am, I'm like pulling, it's like, well, I have this amazing
1:00:47 Speaker 00 relationship with my daughter from really this like, like cultivate and stemming from that 30 minutes. It's just 30 minutes. Unfortunately, because I work, I don't know if it's unfortunate, I don't, anyway, I don't pick up my kids from school at 3 o'clock every day, like, you know, many parents do. Because I can't, I work. But that doesn't mean, just because I'm not spending that time, these coffee dates are really this quality time that color not only how I experience the week, but my relationships. And from that is where the happiness comes from.
1:01:30 Speaker 00 To your question of time and money.
1:01:37 Speaker 00 My dissertation work was actually looking at what's the effect of focusing on time versus money and our critical resource and what my studies over the course in lots of different ways have shown that those who focus on time as their critical resource are happier. And really, it is because they invest their time more intentionally. It's not default evenings. It is not allowing your time to be soaked up on TikTok. It is about being intentional and spending time in ways that matter to you.
1:02:21 Speaker 00 Thinking about money actually has its own effect and it sort of drives towards these extrinsic goals, whereas when you think about time, it's driving you to invest your time in these activities that are aligned with your intrincals, your purpose. Now, it's not like money is bad because money can actually be spent to improve our time. And the research that looks at what are the happiest ways of spending money, all, I mean, my interpretation of them, is that it's all about making your time better. So it is outsourcing, actually, so putting some money against, if there are activities
1:03:06 Speaker 00 or chores in your life that absolutely feel like a chore and that are pulling you out of time that you can spend in these ways that are aligned with your goals of whether it is investing and cultivating your relationships, investing in activities that really allow you to fulfill your purpose, then that is time well spent.
1:03:30 Chris Williamson? Pay someone to wash your car, pay someone to do the gardening, pay someone to perhaps come and do some laundry or something.
1:03:38 Speaker 00 Yeah, but it doesn't even have to be so clear as like paying someone so that you don't have to do it. There are services now, like grocery shopping. So yes, you are paying someone to do their groceries or delivery.
1:03:54 Speaker 00 Serve it like meal services where it is like so that it saves you from doing the grocery shopping and the time cooking, a lot of it is prepped. And so that that is saving time and yes, you are paying money. It is more expensive to have this meal delivery service than if you were to go and pick out the, you know, the produce and everything and put it together yourself. But what you've done is you've saved time. And then you can spend that time in those ways. And so this is like such a clear trade off for uh me as a working mom. Instead of leaving work early to go grocery shopping or coming home late,
1:04:39 Speaker 00 which is those precious hours with my kids before they go to bed. So that I'm grocery shopping and then like cooking, which I hate to do anyway. Um, like the meal service, it costs a little bit more money, but then I get the extra time at work that I need. And then my evening is not cooking dinner and cleaning up dishes. It is sitting with my family and you know, hanging out with my kids, helping them with their homework, hearing about their days, having that wonderful conversation with my husband. Um, so also um, research looks at uh pro-social spending, uh that spending money on other people
1:05:22 Speaker 00 actually makes us happier than spending money on ourselves. And of and also my work shows that giving experiential gifts versus material gifts um increases a sense of connection. Uh, the recipient feels closer to you. And so pairing that together as well as research showing that experiential purchases like going out to dinner, going to a concert, going on vacation versus material purchases like buying a handbag or I don't know, other material purchases, actually which tend to be material purchases, electronics. Um.
1:06:01 Speaker 00 That people have greater happiness from their experiential purchases because they have the experience of spending that time. So it is time that you're spending, but you also have the memory. Oftentimes, those experiences are shared. If you're giving an experiential gift, like taking someone out to dinner, getting them tickets for a concert, that is a shared experience versus buying yourself a handbag. So again, the sort of spending money in ways that buy you better time, more fulfilling time, and connect
1:06:38 Speaker 00 you with other people and foster those, you know, relationships, that is money well spent. So it's not, and it's also, I think it's super important to not ignore the fact that people who don't have enough money to satisfy their basic needs, yes, more money, and the research shows, leads to greater happiness. But actually, what it's not, is not greater happiness, it's reducing the unhappiness, the stress, and the pressures of not being able to satisfy your needs.
1:07:14 Chris Williamson? That's very interesting. I mean, there's been so much, so much of the, over $70,000 per year, happiness starts to tail off. Then I had Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on at the start of the year, and he seemed to suggest that for every increment of increase in, I want to say, life satisfaction was the measurement rather than happiness, you needed to double the amount of money. So in order for you to go from 70 to 140, you'd need to go from 140 to 280, and 280 to 560. Is there any legs to that when it comes to earning the relationship between the money that you earn and your happiness or satisfaction in life?
1:07:53 Speaker 00 Um, well, it is like, and actually it's going on that sort of diminishing returns. These things have less impact over time. I talked about the role of hedonic adaptation. Um, and so that's, that's a piece of it. It, it comes from adapting to your circumstances. And then you need all the more to have any effect on your experience. Um, and so, yes, but the, and that's why it's so helpful to continue to come back to time. And what matters to you and your purpose, because then it is absolutely continues to be rewarding.
1:08:35 Speaker 00 When you are achieving along those dimensions as opposed to these external lens.
1:08:40 Chris Williamson? I suppose as well, it stops you from overshooting. Now, I'm around some pretty competent people in Austin. And a lot of them are going to be worth a hell of a lot of money within the next decade or so, right? I mean, we're in the city that Elon Musk lives in, so the opportunities, the ceiling is limitless. And I think thankfully, most of them have done enough self-work to be able to check themselves and go, hang on. Just, just how much do I need to destroy myself in pursuit of an amount of wealth? That's 10 times as much as the most amount of money that I would need per year in order to be happy. And we were, I was talking to a friend over dinner about this last night. I was like, look, if I 10x my income, I genuinely don't know what I do.
1:09:24 Chris Williamson? That what I buy a slightly nicer coffee on a morning on the days that I do have, like, you know,
1:09:32 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:09:32 Chris Williamson? I'm sure that the, it would be great to fly private and I'm sure it would be great to do the whatever and the other things. But I, I think that when it comes to a, a realistic expectation of what's going to happen in life, optimizing for time, optimizing for the experiences that in retrospect, you know, you're going to be glad that you've done. Just seems to be a much safer way to go about things. And then if the byproduct comes of you being worth a hundred million in 10 years' time, then fantastic. But you know that you're optimizing for the things which actually matter. And or everything else is just extra.
1:10:09 Speaker 00 Absolutely, and that is, you said it so directly. It's not only a safer route to happiness, it's the direct route. Like, it is, if you are investing your time on the things that matter to you, then you will be happier, you will be more satisfied. And it's not more is better. It is just being intentional and spending the time in ways that matter to you. And as you said, if, if money comes along with it, fantastic. Like, that's gravy.
1:10:49 Speaker 00 And you do, and again, not ignoring the fact that you do need to be able to have enough money to satisfy your basic needs. It's so helpful to continue to sort of touch back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Because at the very base of it is you need, you have your physiological needs. You need food, shelter, safety, health. Those are your physiological needs. The very next, once those are satisfied, and you need money to put food on the table, to live in a safe place. But once those basic physiological needs are met,
1:11:31 Speaker 00 then the next most fundamental need that we have is sense of connection and belonging. And that's where these relationships come into play. And then, it's like, once you are shored up and make sure that you have strong relationships, then you sort of move into this competence and self-actualization, where it's these sort of more individual pursuits. But you do need enough money to, and like, I, I have been doing the work long enough of comparing time and money, and I am sensitive to like, it's not that having any money doesn't matter,
1:12:14 Speaker 00 but having a whole lot more money also doesn't matter.
1:12:19 Chris Williamson? Cassie Holmes, ladies and gentlemen. If people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do, where should they go?
1:12:24 Speaker 00 My website, Cassie M Holmes dot com. And then my book, I mean, it pulls it all together. These learnings based off of my career of research and teaching the course for years and seeing the effects. And so I'm so excited to bring these learnings to people more generally and make people happier with their time.
1:12:48 Chris Williamson? Thank you, Cassie. I appreciate you.
1:12:50 Speaker 00 Thanks so much for having me.
1:12:52 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd, causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.
1:13:02 Speaker 03 Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
1:13:08 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped going? You start, you freeze to death, that's what.
1:13:13 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
1:13:16 Speaker 04 I'm not the first then.
1:13:17 Speaker 03 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17.9 minutes without parent.
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